1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a sample positioning method and a charged particle beam apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A charged particle beam is a general term for an ion beam and an electron beam. An apparatus that can perform any one of processing, observing, and analyzing (hereafter, referred to as ‘observing etc.’) using a focused beam of charged particles is called a charged particle beam apparatus. Such a charged particle beam apparatus is equipped with at least any one of an ion beam column for generating an ion beam and an electron beam column for generating an electron beam. Such a charged particle beam apparatus also includes a complex apparatus equipped with a plurality of columns.
In a charged particle beam apparatus, it is required to put an objective portion, that is, a portion to be observed, of a sample (hereafter, briefly referred to as a ‘target observation area’) in the field of view of a charged particle beam before observing the sample using a charged particle beam.
For example, an SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) having an optical microscope for scanning an area to be observed of a sample has been disclosed in Patent Document 1.
A particle optical SEM (charged particle beam apparatus) that takes an image with a CCD camera by radiating a laser beam to a sample in a test chamber (sample chamber) and displays a mark showing the position of the axial line of a particle beam with the image of the sample in the test chamber on a display has been proposed in Patent Document 2. According to the particle optical SEM, an operator positions the sample while seeing the mark and the image of the sample on the display.